Here’s an article I wrote a few years ago and maybe joem can add his suggestions and techniques. Joe has great success with 3-fly nymphing!The landlocked salmon shot into the air and twisted as if vaulting from a trampoline. The silvery two-pounder suspended in mid-air for an instant, its backdrop the autumn red and gold foliage along the banks of the East Outlet of the Kennebec River. It was late October and the river was fishing well for me that day. As the male salmon tired, I held the net in the current, reaching high with the rod, positioning the fish as it swung near. I peered into the clear water. Suddenly, there were two fish! A brook trout, now hooked below the salmon, had struck the dropper fly, hooking himself and releasing the salmon in an instant.Something similar happened to me while fishing the Big Wood River near Ketchum, Idaho this past summer. It was early morning, and I was fishing a deep run using two small bead heads below a weighted golden stonefly nymph, casting up and across, mending and dead drifting. I was trying to coax a rainbow from a sure bet lie. Sure enough, a rainbow struck the large nymph and as I played the fish near the net, another smaller rainbow struck one of the bead heads trailing below the already hooked fish. Luckily, I was able to net and release both fish, although they tangled my leader beyond unraveling. As proved by these two incidents, using three flies when nymph fishing worked better than I intended. When trout and salmon are feeding actively on stonefly nymphs, caddis worms, and midge pupae, the three-nymph technique works well, especially on larger rivers, that are running clear. In the east it’s the fall and in the west it’s in the high elevation rivers all summer when three nymphs is often better than one…or two!Casting three bead head flies can be frustrating at first, until you learn to open the loop on the back cast and sort of heave the cast. And of course, windy days can be very frustrating, most often leading to removal of one or even two flies from the rig. Sure, there’s a lot of tying and clipping involved, especially when you want to change the first, heavier fly, or if you tangle up. But I enjoy playing with the combinations and offering the fish a choice, while using the weight of the beads to fish deeper levels.Indicator…or not Casting three flies and an indicator has resulted in so many frequent tangles for me that now I will only use one or two flies below an indicator. When I do use an indicator, it’s almost always to fish the larger nymphs, and I add a really small bead head or sparkle emerger as an added bonus, sort of a surprise offering. The indicator really helps detect strikes that would go unnoticed otherwise. But when the fish are feeding at mid-level or a foot or two under the surface as they often do in Maine Rivers in the fall, then I go with the three-fly rig. The up and across cast and immediate mend usually sinks the flies to the right depth and when I use a sink tip line or a clear, poly-sink leader, I can detect strikes which usually come as the flies are on the swing or at the end of the drift.Three-Fly SystemI start with a sink tip or clear poly-sink leader to which I add 4 or 5 feet of 3X tippet. The first fly is either a bead head size 6 or 8 or is a weighted size 6 or 4, depending on the depth and speed of the current. To the big nymph’s hook bend, I tie an 18” length of 4X fluorocarbon tippet, and to that, a size 14 bead head caddis worm. Finally, I add another 12 or 14” of 5X to the caddis hook and to that, a size 16 to 20 bead head midge pupa.Admittedly that’s a lot of junk to haul into the water, but I find that the rig casts better if I cast slowly and deliberately, even turning my body slightly on the back cast and consciously trying to move my arm continuously throughout the cast. When the rig does tangle, and it will, quickly evaluate which will take longer. A complete or partial rebuild will often take less time than unraveling the snarl.Fly SelectionFirst make sure the nymphs you use represent the insects that inhabit the water you’re fishing. I consider the wind, the depth, speed, and clarity of the water before even deciding to use the three fly method at all. The fly selection is vast. The deeper, faster water demands the use of a heavy bead head, like a size 4 or 6 tungsten bead head stonefly nymph as the first fly. It’s good to carry a variety of stonefly nymphs in assorted colors and sizes. Caddis worms abound in most trout streams, so larger size 10 and 12 bead head caddis worms are a good choice for the second fly. If I want to fish deeper, I might use a bead head Prince nymph or even two stones in size 4 and 6, and make my third fly, the bead head caddis.Check the stream bottom with your kick net as you enter the water. If you notice the size of the nymphs and the relative numbers of each size, you can match your imitations to the most abundant nymph. I try to check with the seine net each time out, even on the streams I am familiar with because the numbers and sizes of the nymphs change. Sometimes there’s a predominance of nymphs present, which weren’t there a week before, so I have to select flies accordingly. It pays to seine.Over the years, I’ve learned that to catch fish I often must learn to change my methods to suit the fish. We’ve all observed other fly anglers hooking up consistently while the rest of us go strikeless. It’s sometimes only a matter of fly selection. But the secret of success might also lie in the method used. The more methods we can employ, the greater the chances.